Luxembourg’s PM becomes first EU leader to marry same-sex partner

Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel has become the first EU leader to marry their same-sex partner. Mr Bettel married his long-term partner Gauthier Destenay – who he has been in a civil partnership with since 2010 – last Friday (May 15), in a private ceremony at Luxembourg City’s town hall.  “I could have hidden it or repressed it and been unhappy my whole life,” Mr Bettel told a Belgian broadcaster the night before the nuptials, the BBC reports. “But I told myself that if you want to be a politician and be honest in politics, you have to be honest with yourself and accept that you are who you are.” The couple – who will reportedly forego a honeymoon so the PM can attend an economic forum in Kazakhstan this week – got engaged in August last year, shortly after the country’s equal marriage bill was enacted by the Chamber of Deputies in June. The first ceremonies began taking place on January 1 this year. Luxembourg is the only country in the world to have both a gay Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Etienne Schneider. Mr Bettel is the tiny nation’s first openly gay Prime Minister and the third openly gay head of government following Iceland’s former Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir and Belgium’s former Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo.